


fields of wheat

by isometric



Series: the shore to your ocean [2]
Category: South Park
Genre: Dragon New Kid, Gen, High Elf King Kyle, Orc Princess Kenny, Princess Kenny McCormick, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Stick of Truth AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-07-25 00:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16186232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isometric/pseuds/isometric
Summary: In the aftermath, someone has to pick up the pieces.





	fields of wheat

**Author's Note:**

> I was devastated and personally victimized by Passion Pit's [Swimming in the Flood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFSEQ8zc-jk)

He deals the last blow. He owes her that much.

Kyle had drawn him aside, before the battle, asking if he wanted sit it out. Dova, though grateful for the offer, had refused it nonetheless.

He can’t bear for her to hurt any more at the hands of anyone else.

The blade —Dragonsbane, that she had stolen from a human general, had stolen _for_ him— strikes true, into her heart. The Staff drops from her hands, clatters to the ground. She slumps into him, and he catches her, lowers her gently to the floor, like he had so many years ago in that empty throne room.

The murmur of madness that Dova’s heard in the back of his head for the past few months, that whispered to him of grief and hurt and helpless anger, finally goes quiet. In a moment of panic, he carefully turns her in his arms, desperate to see her face.

The princess looks up at him, her eyes purple and wide. Already, the colour is leeching out of them, leaving blue behind. She grasps at him, hand trembling, till he takes it in his, continues trembling even in his hold.

She doesn’t say anything. She can’t. Dova reaches for her thoughts, finds nothing but silence and stuttered pain. Then the fear sets in, an instinctual gasp for air; blood wells up her throat, and she chokes, coughs just the once.

“Kenny,” Dova says.

It’s the first and last time he calls her true name.

She looks at him, one last time. Then, she’s not looking at anything at all.

Behind them, the sun begins to rise.

\---

Dova brings her home.

He finds the graves of her siblings, her parents, disinters the whole lot. Brings the bones back to Hollow Falls, to its royal cemetery. Buries the family together, reunited after two long decades.

The orcs don’t come home. Once she got hold of the Staff, she gave them human bodies and human memories, to blend in with their human neighbours. To keep them safe from her plot; to keep the burden of the past to herself.

Dova buries the last orc, now alone in his remembrance of it all.

Beside him, Kyle keeps company. Kyle, who had been innocent in this whole mess, known nothing of his father’s indifferent cruelty and lust for power; who had his father deposed, saw him tried and convicted for crimes against personhood, rotting away in prison. Kyle, who owed Dova nothing and even freely offered friendship and support during those dark months, those long nights— who stands beside him now, bearing witness to the end of things.

“She never loved me, did she?” Kyle asks. Dova thinks back to all the times she had interacted with the elf; how the resentment never left her, only grew as she watched him fall for her, fall for her lies; how she raged that he could so easily forget that once, another kingdom had stood beside his. Still, she had made excuses to keep helping him negotiate for peace with the wizard king, guided him towards better trade deals that benefitted both the humans and elves.

Perhaps that had not been love; at least, not the way Kyle had loved.

Kyle nods absent-mindedly. “She must have hated being betrothed to me,” he says. Dova wonders to himself, that the new High Elf King should stumble so closely to the truth, and yet completely miss the fact that she hated not being given a choice more. That, though she had been the one to broker peace between Larnion and Kupa under the guise of a long-lost human princess, the wizard ultimately threw her to the elves when he found no more use for her.

But, in the end, none of that matters. There is no longer any princess to love and watch over, no more orcs to protect as their kingdom’s last draconic guardian. There is only Dova now, a dragon who has lost his bond, and the silent capital where he’d spent his youth following the only person who had ever mattered.

Dragonsbane burns on his hip, through its scabbard. Dova takes the blade out, feels it cry out for its mistress— feels the same himself. He rests it point first into the ground, in front of the gravestone sealing the royal crypt that holds her body. The blade goes easy, docile in face of its mistress’ resting place.

Part of him wants to follow suit. Wants to remain in front of the tomb, hold vigil for her final sleep. Wants to guard what he has left of her, stay the silent keeper of these ruins, till his body disintegrates into dust. The dragon-oath in his veins pulls at his mind, missing the chosen who had once calmed it; Dova feels the degeneration of his self begin, knows he won’t last long.

But he has a duty to her legacy.

“Kupa needs you,” Kyle says.

Dova thinks of the humans who were born orcs. Of the power vacuum, now that the wizard king has been locked away, charged with genocide and crimes against personhood. Kupa needs a king, till it can function on its own.

Someone has to tell the story of Hollow Falls.

“We need you,” Kyle says, voice gentle. Dova acquiesces, lets himself be led away from the tomb.

On the way back to the human kingdom, they pass by fields of burnt vegetation, cursed to barrenness, where wheat used to grow tall and swaying. Orcs don’t subsist on grains, their lands better suited for roots and tubers. But Dandar had them planted twenty years ago, at the behest of his eldest daughter, who’d hoped to show Kupa they were not so different.

Dova forces his thoughts away from his memory of her, keeps his eyes on the open blue sky.

In that fortress, cradled in his arms, her hair had glowed golden in the morning light. Once upon a time, the colour had seemed like a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> ~~yes it's _that_ Dragonbane~~
> 
>  
> 
> forgive me the agriculture bs, I don't know anything about farming :(
> 
> also idk how clear the end was, but reference to Fire Emblem's dragon degeneration, except twisted to suit my purposes, so Dova does go mad in the future from the grief/loss, but more of a dementia way and not the...you know...destructive deity way...


End file.
